There are times when a word becomes so familiar that it risks losing its depth. ‘VALUES’ may be one of those words.
It appears everywhere – on walls, in strategies, in leadership frameworks, in personal statements. And yet, beneath this widespread use, there is often a quiet unease. We talk about values more than ever but are not always clear what we mean, or how they truly shape what we do.
Our newest Oasis series begins in that space.
It’s an invitation to slow down, look again, and re-engage with values not as fixed statements, but as living, evolving forces in our work and lives.
Our Oasis values journey stretches back over four decades. Since the 1980s, influenced by researchers, thinkers and practitioners, we’ve been in the thick of the organic nature of giving voice to what matters whether in conflict zones, community initiatives, emergent companies, social movements and global enterprises, where values are continuously expressed, challenged, and reshaped in practice, often under pressure.
For me, values have never been a one-off exercise. They are an ongoing inquiry, through lived practice, culture development, bespoke programmes, renewal work, and coaching spaces, where people reflect deeply on the decisions they face and what helps them make them. Not perfectly. Not finally. But continuously.
More recently, this inquiry has been reinvigorated through our collaboration with Prof. Arnold Smit and his work Making Values Real. His highly engaging contribution has helped articulate something we’ve long experienced: values are not just things we hold, but things we work with – in tension, in relationship, and often in uncertainty.
And this feels timely.
Across organisations and society, legacy leadership models are being stretched and feel like they are dying. AI is raising new ethical questions. Complexity and related cost is increasing. Many are discovering that the values they thought they held don’t easily translate into action.
In this context, values are not abstract.
They are central to how we navigate what is unfolding.
Over the coming weeks, we’ll be sharing a series of focussed reflections from across Oasis and guest contributors, exploring:
- how the story of values has evolved
- values in practice
- how values shape (and sometimes hinder) our lives and decision making
- the courage to voice values and the hope it offers
- the essential skills for values at work
These are not answers, but invitations into a shared inquiry.
The series also forms the backdrop to one of our Beneath the Surface dialogues in June (fully booked), bringing together CEOs and other decision-makers committed to values-led leadership, while still facing real, unresolved questions.
If there is a thread running through all of this, it is perhaps this: Values are not as simple as we might wish. They can guide and constrain, unite and divide. They don’t sit outside the messiness of organisational life, they live within it.
And it is precisely in engaging with that complexity that their real potential lies.
Not as slogans.
Not as rules.
But as living forces shaping how we see, choose, relate, and act.
A continuation of a long journey, and, we sense, a timely one.
